Chapter 17 #2
Because Ax has always been the fixer. We ask no questions. He tells no lies.
But this… I drilled him. Tormented him. And he fled.
Now I’m terrified I’ve ruined everything we’ve built over the past two months: the intimacy, the ease, the way he fills my life without even trying. How happy I’ve felt. How content he’s seemed.
The ache for a baby is still there, but it’s softer, dulled by my ache for him.
And I know that somewhere along the way, those lines we drew, the boundaries we set, the contract… none of it could protect me from this.
Because the ultimate truth is, I’m falling in love with him.
Me – anti-love, anti-relationship – falling for my best friend.
And maybe deep down, I always knew this was happening – pushing for a contract because I thought it could somehow save me from it. But no clause, no promise, no signature on a dotted line can shield me from what’s already taking root in my heart.
I suck in another breath and let it out slow.
Everything’s changed.
I’ve changed.
And I’ve no idea what to do with that.
I just know I can’t bear how we left things tonight.
Can’t bear the thought of him thinking I believe the worst.
I’m already throwing back the covers and flicking on my bedside lamp. It’s 2 a.m. Too late for sanity. Too early for sense.
But I don’t care.
Some things can’t wait for day to break…
Less than thirty minutes later, I’m strapped into my McLaren, engine roaring through the sleeping city. Streetlights smear into gold streaks; bridges flash past in steel and shadow. I barely notice. My world has narrowed to a single point: the old industrial strip turned billionaire loft haven.
His place.
I swing into the private pier road and pull up outside the warehouse: a hulking beast of soot-dark brick and black steel, built for machinery, not a man.
But it’s Axel.
Rough edges. Quiet power. All him.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I bet the inside’s as bare as ever. Stripped to necessity. The man doesn’t do excess in any form. And yet here I am, barrelling into his night, bringing drama to his door.
But nothing about this turmoil feels excessive to me.
Whether he agrees is another matter.
My pulse skitters as I kill the engine and step out.
The night gives me a welcome slap: cold air, river spray, wind whipping through my coat.
I tighten the belt and sprint across the cobbles, blind to the tide smacking the pilings as I stare up at his entrance.
A massive freight door, twice my height, reinforced and bolted.
No fancy doorbell, just an old brass buzzer I swear he welded on himself.
I take a breath and press it.
Then again.
And again.
Heel tapping, nerves rising.
‘Come on, Axel. Come on.’
A lock thuds. The door swings open—
Holy Mother of God…
‘Taylor?!’
Black boxers slung low, hair mussed, eyes wild and shot to hell.
He’s all heat, inked muscle, and total confusion.
And never have I wanted him more. My knees go weak.
My chest tightens. My pulse explodes. The fear, the ache, the longing – the last few hours, the last few months, everything – crashes into the way I’m looking at him.
‘Ax…’
Axel
I scrub my hair out of my face, still not convinced I’m seeing straight.
Taylor. On my doorstep. Black mac cinched tight at her waist, hair wild around her shoulders, face bare – no armour tonight. Just those eyes, blazing straight through me. Her gunmetal-grey McLaren spits and crackles behind her, the sound as feral and alive as she is.
Did she race here?
From her bed?
‘Do you always answer the door in your underwear?’ she asks, breathless.
I shake my head, half-expecting a screw to fall loose.
‘When someone comes banging in the dead of night, yeah.’
It feels like I haven’t seen her in years. Like something in me’s been locked up – held under, starved of oxygen – since I walked away from her. It’s only been hours, but my body doesn’t know that. It only knows relief. And want. And an ache I hate to name.
And all I can think is—
Get in here.
Don’t leave.
Not ever.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, voice breaking, ‘So sorry.’
Then her hands are on my face and she’s kissing me.
Not just kissing – consuming. Devouring me like I’m the first thing she’s tasted in days. Fire flares beneath my skin. I mean to pull back, to get words out, to ask what’s changed, but my body ain’t listening. It slams the door shut and hauls her in.
Words can wait.
Right now, there’s only this: her need, her urgency, the way she clings to me like she’s terrified I’ll disappear.
I tear off her coat and she locks her legs around my waist, shoes hitting the deck.
‘What the hell are you wearing?’ I mutter against her mouth, satin slipping through my fingers at her hips.
‘Not a lot.’
And it’s all for me.
My smile is pure sin. ‘Good girl.’
I carry her through the dark loft, mouths melded, hands everywhere. By the time we reach the bedroom, we’re long past the point of slowing down.
We hit the bed hard. I strip her bare as she shoves my boxers down. My knees force hers apart, and then I’m there. One brutal thrust and I’m buried to the hilt, our groans fused by our mouths. She clamps her legs around me, meeting every savage drive, heels digging in, nails breaking skin.
It’s wild and ugly. Comfort and chaos. And everything I wanna live for.
I grind and grind, hunting that spot, that pressure, that rhythm that steals her breath. She tightens, head thrown back. She’s going, she’s going, she’s—
‘Taylor!’
I break apart as she shatters beneath me, our climax ripping through us. We shake and shudder, my body caving. I plant my elbows, fighting not to crush her—
But she drags me down, refusing the space.
And that’s when I feel it: the dampness on her cheek.
‘Tay?’ My body ices over, my head rearing back. ‘Are you crying? Did I hurt you? What’s wrong?’
She shakes her head, but her mouth trembles, more tears building in those eyes I know better than my own.
‘Fuck, Tay.’
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers. ‘It’s not you. It’s me.’
‘The words every man loves to hear…’
She lets out a choked laugh as I roll to the side and pull her into me. Kiss her head. Stroke her hair. ‘Talk to me.’
She tilts her head back to meet my gaze, the moonlight slipping through the high warehouse windows turning her into something half-real, half-myth. Softened edges. Silvered skin. Like she doesn’t quite belong to this world – or mine.
But those eyes… their pain.
‘You need to spill.’ Every muscle re-engages. ‘Now.’
‘I’m so sorry I was angry,’ she rushes out.
‘I’m sorry I let you leave thinking the worst. The truth is…
I’m glad he’s gone, Ax. I’m glad he can’t hurt us any more.
But I hate what it cost you. I hate that you carried it alone.
That you didn’t think you could tell me.
After everything we’ve shared these past two months… ’
‘Baby…’ I cup her cheek, brushing away the wet heat beneath her eye and wishing I could take away her suffering as easy. ‘This was set in motion long before—’
I almost say us. But it’s too loaded, too risky – too close to the line I’ve been treading since the beginning.
‘The day he went down, the wheels were already turning,’ I say instead. ‘Back then, it was what I did. I handled things you and Theo never needed to see. There wasn’t anything to tell you until it happened. And when it did, you knew the same time I did. I didn’t keep this from you.’
‘And if…’ Her voice is small now, tinged with hope. ‘If we’d been like this back then, would you have told me?’
Part of me wants to say yes. The part drowning in her eyes, desperate to give her what she wants.
But my gut knows better.
Because the deeper truth – the one I can’t say – burns a hole clean through me.
That I love her.
That I always have.
Nothing’s changed. Not for me.
And loving her means protecting her. From it. From me. From the wreckage I’ll always carry with me.
Her lashes flicker at whatever she reads into my silence, then fall.
‘I guess we’ll never really know,’ she says into my chest.
I expect her to pull away. To leave. So when she curls into my chest like she belongs there, I don’t question it. I just hold her. Breathe her in.
Taylor. In my bed. In my home.
I stare up at the ceiling, the moonlight gliding over the old steel beams – exposed, scarred, still standing – and realise:
I’ve never felt more at home in my entire damn life.
And it has nothing to do with these four walls.
And everything to do with her.